Calling all Trolls … ( 01 / 22 / 2014 )
Calling all Trolls … ( 01 / 22 / 2014 )
“ To truly live is to war with trolls .” ~ Henrik Ibsen
Yesterday , during a rather intense online chat about the myths meat-eaters use to justify treating animals as mere commodities vs . the merits of living as a vegan ( i . e . seeing animals as equally worthy sentient beings ), it finally happened : I was called -- among other names too surly to mention here -- a " Troll ".
Now , when it first happened , I was more than a bit taken aback . After all , I had learned that a " Troll " was a negative label , describing someone who makes comments in chat-rooms & blog-threads & Facebook posts that are purposefully designed to annoy or insult or offend . Of course , I knew that I wasn ' t doing this at all ; I knew that I was simply trying my best to calmly illuminate the oft-ignored facts surrounding an oft-ignored modern-day tragedy ... And shortly after exiting the conversation , I realized the delicious irony of the situation : that a meat-eater calling a vegan a " Troll " for standing up for the rights of enslaved and tortured animals is kind of like a white bigot calling Martin Luther King a racist for telling others to treat blacks with Respect & Dignity … In summation , the insults that were thrown at me by my necrovorian comrade were nothing short of ridiculous , and I went to bed with a smile on my face -- with heartfelt Empathy & Compassion for his pain and his confusion , of course , and yet with a gentle smile on my face nonetheless .
And then this morning I awoke with a different thought -- a thought that started to make last night ' s encounter more profound than profane ... Essentially I awoke to the realization that what we might need more than anything else at this time of teetering -- that what we might need more than anything else at this time when everything beautiful and everything ultimately worthwhile hangs in the balance ; when humanity ' s very long-term existence hangs by a thread – that what we actually need these days … is MORE TROLLS ! … Not the " trolls " that exist merely to antagonize and manipulate and insult and lambast , mind you . We most certainly already have far more than enough of those denizens of discord in our lives . No , what we truly need now are people with the integrity to reflect another trait of Trolls -- namely , the courage to speak out about things that matter ; the courage to not only discuss matters of injury & injustice with friends & family , but to do so openly and overtly with those actually doing the perpetrating ; the courage to meet the enemy on his or her own turf and ... respectfully-yet-resolutely ... stand up for what is Right .
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